Why Email Signups are Better than Social Media Followers?

Every time a new social media platform debuts, obituaries are written about emails. You would have read such articles how email is being edged out by social media platforms. While social media has captured the attention of Internet users throughout the world because of the ease of use and accessibility, it is too early to write off email marketing. Email marketing has not lost its charm yet and is here to stay despite the stardom of social media.

Although social media
marketing requires minimum effort, it cannot build person-to-person
communication like email marketing. Sure, social media followers and email
subscribers look forward to hearing from you, but there is a bigger commitment
made by email subscribers. While it is much easier to follow someone on Twitter
or ‘Like’ a Facebook page, email signups reflect that a person is genuinely
interested in your brand (most of the times).

Let’s explore more about why email signups are better than social media followers.

Why Email Signups are Better than Social Media Followers?

1. Emails garner more attention

When compared to social media posts, emails capture more subscriber attention. The algorithmic changes in social media platforms has drastically reduced the reach of the posts. Consequently, it has become a challenge to drive organic traffic on these channels. Email marketing, on the other hand, eliminates some of the competition and drives better visibility.

2. You can personalize the communications

Email creates the feeling of one-on-one communication, which is not possible with social media. The ability to impart a human touch to the message makes email sign-ups more important than social media followers. You can address a subscriber by the first name in emails, which is obviously not possible through social media. Moreover, artificial intelligence has paved new avenues in the field of email personalization and given a leg up on conversions. Take a look at the email by Lyft, the best example of personalized communication.

Source: Really Good Emails

3. The marketer has complete control of the content

Whenever a marketer creates an email campaign, he or she has full control on the message that needs to be conveyed. Whether it is the content or visual elements, the possibilities are endless. Unlike social media marketing, there is no restriction on the word count or the usage of rich media like GIFs. You can try new techniques like gamification through keyframe animations in emails, which is only possible through GIFs in social media. Email subscribers, therefore, have a better experience than social media followers.

4. Micro-segmentation is possible for email signups

Social media allows
you to target audience falling in a particular age group or residing in a
specific geographic location. Email marketing goes a step ahead and facilitates
micro-segmentation by considering factors like past purchases, products
searched for, total purchase value etc. This precision is not possible on
social media channels.

5. Email marketing allows you to test what works

Through email
marketing, you can carry out A/B testing and check multiple variants of the
same campaign. This tactic allows you to evaluate the metrics and figure out
what kind of emails are working for your business. Such trial and error method
is not very feasible through social media.

6. Your email list is yours

You never know when
social media like Facebook or Twitter might decide to bring down your page or
remove your followers in case of an accidental violation of privacy policies.
This does not happen with your email sign-ups as you have the full ownership of
those subscribers. You just have to follow the anti-spam rules like CAN-SPAM
and GDPR to ensure a quality list of email subscribers.

7. Emails yield more engagement

As social media
platforms like Facebook keep changing their algorithms every now and then, you
might not be able to drive sufficient engagement for your posts. It is sad that
your engagement rate does not cross the range of 2-6% on Facebook unless you
post something viral. Email is a relatively consistent marketing channel as it
can bring you 20% open rate when done right.

Let me share a
personal experience with you. Back in 2017, EmailMonks had organized “Email
Design Hunt 2017” contest to recognize the top three email designs of the year.
We had aggressively promoted the contest throughout the social media platforms,
emails, and contest or giveaway forums. We received the maximum participation
through our email marketing efforts, demonstrating the fact that “Email is
King”.

8. It is preferred by customers over other channels

Customers are familiar with the promotional messages sent through email. It is also considered to be among the most important commercial channel. What would you appreciate more—A personalized email or a broadcasted message from a Facebook page? I would certainly prefer the former because I have expressed explicit consent to receive their communication, which is not the case when I have simply ‘Liked’ a page on Facebook.

9. More effective automation is possible with emails

Once someone has signed up on your email list, you can send out triggered emails based on the subscriber’s activity. Let’s say you are an e-commerce store owner. If a prospect abandons a cart without completing a purchase, you can send out a series of automated cart abandonment emails to get back the lost customer. Moreover, you can also set an automation workflow of re-engagement emails for the dormant customers who had purchased from you in the past. Such emails can help you in retaining the existing customers and save the cost of customer acquisition. Although social media enables automation, it is not as effective as email automation.

10. You can get exact metrics for your email campaigns

Email service
providers give accurate results for your email campaigns that includes open
rates, click-through rates, unsubscribes, and bounce rates. As a result, you
can have a clear picture of how your emails are performing. You can analyze the
past campaigns to understand the kind of emails that are resonating the best
with your subscribers. Even though social media provides you with metrics such
as the reach of the post, audience engagement, and click-through rate, email
metrics are much more detailed as they also offer the subscriber information.

Final Thoughts

An email subscriber is more like a school friend you adore while a social media follower is merely an office colleague with whom you can have small talk. However, this does not imply that you dissolve your social media marketing team. It just means that you should focus more on your email marketing efforts rather than paid social media.